8 December 2006, Friday

Lojban (IPA [ˈloʒban], official full name Lojban: a realization of Loglan) is a syntactically unambiguous, predicate logic-based constructed language which was created by the Logical Language Group in 1987.

Lojban:

Has a grammar that is based on predicate logic, and is capable of expressing complex logical constructs precisely.
Has no irregularities or ambiguities in spelling or grammar, so it can be easily parsed by computer.
Is designed to be as culturally neutral as possible.
Is simple to learn and use compared to many natural languages.
Possesses an intricate system of attitudinal indicators which effectively communicate contextual emotion.

Lojban was designed as a human language, and not as a computer language. It is therefore intended for use in conversation, reading, writing, and thinking. However, since Lojban can be processed by a computer much more easily than can a natural language, Lojban-based computer applications are a natural expectation. Due to its unambiguous grammar and simple structure, it can be easily parsed by computers, making it possible for Lojban to be used in the future for computer-human interaction, and perhaps conversation. Lojban’s predicate structure is similar to AI, suggesting it as a powerful tool in AI processing, especially in the storing and processing of data about the world and people’s conceptions of it.

This is the language legislation should be written in. Well, this is an answer, whether it is the answer is yet to be determined. As far as I could tell from a brief research, noone has thought yet of using Lojban as a formal language for legislation, but I feel it would work fine.

I will have to dust my logic knowledge to see what kind of reasoning can be done with first-order logic, but the features they sell to the linguists are impressive enough. Unambiguity. Easy to process through a computer. Easy (?) to translate to a natural human language (though the language itself is supposed to be easy for humans to learn as well).

There, the problem of (provably!) fair legislation is solved, next in line is the problem of (provably!) fair and secure voting. Bruce Schneier gives a secure protocol in his book, but if I recall correctly from the brief skim over the chapter, it has some practical problems. The question is, what “democratic” government will allow secure elections that cannot be faked…

[…] Taken from here, via the blog of the best geek comic ever, xkcd. Whose author digs Gaiman! Truly, everything is connected to everything. In the case of the Gaiman-related comic though, no two adjacent circles are of the same color ;) This is also the place, where I learned about Lojban […]